Netbook innovator Asustek has announced that it will ship three models of its Eee PC with Ubuntu 10.10 preinstalled. Canonical announced Asus' decision to load the Eee PC 1001PXD, 1011PX and 1015PX with Ubuntu 10.10 from 1 June as one that will "make it one of the most user-friendly PCs on the market". Asus said that "many more" Eee PC models running Ubuntu will be available later this year. Linux fans will hope that in the three years since Asus started shipping Linux on its Eee PCs users will have realised that Linux is far more lightweight and suited to netbook computing than Windows.

There is little evidence so far that tablets can be good at actually productive tasks, and laptops sound like the logical evolution of the desktop for persons who can deal with their smaller screen and don't change any hardware but RAM and mass storage devices.

Right now, Desktop Linux isn't very good at productive tasks either. Unless you're willing to use workarounds like Wine (which may not work) for legacy support or change over all your productivity software to the less popular Linux equivalents (if they exist).

Tablets will eventually get there because they are popular enough with the general public for developers to support those platforms. Industry standard applications (eg. Adobe Creative Suite, Pro Tools, Microsoft Office, AutoCad, Rosetta Stone) will be available for Android/iOS way before a Desktop Linux version is even considered.